Oh, No, I Didn't
by sizzle.like.stygian.ice
Summary: Fleeting flutters of the heart, sudden monster attacks, and the occasional unexpected rendezvous all follow two of Camp Half-Blood's most lovingly feared inhabitants. But the evident turn of events leads to each of them thinking, "No WAY I did that." But they obviously did, didn't they?
1. Chapter 1

**Hey. So it's my first Thalico fic. I hope you like!**

**Disclaimer: I wouldn't be doing this if I actually owned PJO/HOO. -_-**

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The sun was shining bright on a glorious day at Camp Half-Blood. Whee. But on the actual bright side, the war with Gaia and the giants was over for two years now, and Camp was recuperating and running fairly smoothly—close to almost back to normal. The Greek and Roman dispute was finally settled, thanks to some well-planned meddling by Nico (this credit, of course, he gave himself entirely), and just about everyone was buddy-buddy. It was the fourth day of the Hunters' visit at Camp Half-Blood, while Artemis was tending to official duties on Mount Olympus. A game of Capture the Flag, obviously lost to those excessively aggressive girls in aluminum foil clothes, had taken place—but the campers were close for once, said Percy. Sure.

As adamant as his cousin could be, Nico knew Percy's darker secrets, much along the lines of the ones he had himself—from Tartarus. The two boys, along with Annabeth, probably had the toughest time pulling themselves together after the war. But they were together. And Nico knew that his sister Hazel would also be ready to help him whenever he needed it, even if she was across the country. It was kind of a long-lost sibling thing, he supposed. But it definitely helped.

Now carefree, the demigods were freely mingling with one another and with the Hunters as the summer rolled by Long Island. Nico spent his time hanging out with his other friends at Camp, flirting with some girls every now and then, goofing around and trying not to blow things up with Percy and Thalia, and getting involved in the occasional spat-turned-dog-fight with Thalia's second-in-command, Phoebe.

Nico was harshly jolted out of his reminiscence when he was shoved down and nearly run over. His assailant was a long, lithe girl, clad in a white tank top and black cargo pants. Without turning around, she yanked him up by his sleeve and, pulling him along, continued sprinting towards the river.

"Wha—hey, hey, hey! That's a fitted Armani shirt! What's going on?!" He shouted to the girl ahead of him. Her black hair was freely billowing in his face and mouth, so he couldn't get a glimpse of her even if he tried. He splattered some hair strands out of his mouth—ew—and tried again. "Hello? You mind telling me what's goi—WHOA!"

Didn't exactly work. The girl swerved behind the trees near the river bank and hurled Nico next to her, almost slamming his face into a whole bunch of bugs and bark. The force of it might have been an accident, but the momentum of the entire thing was entirely her fault.

Nico stopped himself before his nose could smash against the tree, and leaned his back against the trunk, panting. He turned to see who his captor was, and realized that the gasping Huntress standing next to him was none other than Thalia.

He nudged her with his shoulder, still catching his breath. "Hey," he panted. Slowly, she raised a pair of menacing electric-blue eyes up at him. Nah, not scary. In his opinion, a spork could do better. "What the Hades?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you not want me to pull you out of the path of a drooling, half-blood-thirsty hellhound?" she retorted. Before Nico could reply, she threw her hands in the air, exclaiming, "Jeez, no gratitude! The next time I save your sorry butt, you better be thankful. Or…or Zeus help me, I'll ditch whatever's on your tail, I'll come after you, and I will seriously kill you, hear that?"

Nico blinked intelligently.

Thalia scoffed and rolled her eyes, and yanked Nico down by his collar, considering she barely reached his shoulder. "Look, di Angelo," she growled, "there's a hellhound on the loose out there. I don't know how it got there, or when, but if it gets past the forest and into camp, there'll be problems. So you're helping me get rid of it whether you like it or not."

Nico pushed her hand off his wrinkled shirt and scowled at her. "That's it?" he demanded. "You wrinkled my personally tailored Armani shirt for _that_?"

Instead of the apology he expected, all Nico got from his electricky companion was a sharp, sparky slap across the chest and a, "Shut up and take out your sword."

Well. So much for being the more grounded one. Thalia just didn't know how hard it was to deal with jumpy live wires far too much like herself.

"Okay, you ready?" she whispered. Nico nodded, suddenly aware of how close they had been just moments ago. He mentally slapped himself for ending it, then slapped himself again for thinking like that. "When I tell you, we're gonna charge that oversized mutt. Got it?" she asked.

"Got it."

Together, they slowly walked out into the clearing, waiting for the hellhound to emerge from the woods. They stood there, cautiously watching for the monster.

And that was practically all they did for the next five minutes.

"Okay, maybe it got lost. Can we just go?" Nico whined.

Thalia glared at him. "Man up, Death Breath. And don't act like you have anything better to do, I know you've—" she was cut off by the crash of tree branches and a low growl emanating from the forest. The two of them tensed. Thalia met Nico's eyes for a moment, and he almost lost himself in her beautiful, almost glowing, black-rimmed eyes. _Wait, what? _He thought._ Dude, this is Thalia, not some random chick at camp. She's a _Hunter_. Snap out of it. _His mildly schizophrenic conversation must have had an effect on his expression, because Thalia frowned at him, confused, before he shook his head, realizing with a wince how stupid he must have looked.

One of the shorter trees at the mouth of the forest came crashing down as the hellhound pounced out and started bounding towards them.

"Now?" Nico yelled to Thalia.

"No, idiot, after it mauls us and claws our hearts out! YES, NOW!" she hollered back.

Hoping that Thalia really did mean the sarcasm she implied, Nico charged.

He broke into a short sprint, getting ready to jump on the hellhound's back by the time Thalia made it to the creature's front legs and brought it down. The huge black dog yelped in pain and buckled to its knees just as Nico shot into the air, leaped over its head, and stabbed his Stygian iron sword into its neck, creating a gaping hole at the base of its skull. The hellhound lurched forward and let loose an ear-splitting howl, slowly falling to the ground.

Nico would have been relieved, except he realized that Thalia was still scrambling out from under the hellhound's neck, trying not to get crushed by its massive, swaying body.

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**Well, you like? No like? Do let me know if you want more Thalico stories from me :)**

**If you noticed, I made a reference to the 39 Clues' Sword Thief, courtesy Ian Kabra—the fitted Armani shirt? Oh, and did anyone get that electricity joke I made? About Nico being grounded and Thalia being the live wire? You know, because she keeps sparking. And all wires are grounded so that they don't kill people in case of a short circuit or ove—you know what. If I really have to explain it this much, it's probably too complicated. And yes, I can be a nerd. I'm usually not, I just tend to make jokes with nerd-ish terms. NOT. The same as nerdy. B|**

**Kay, well you've probably gotten enough of my rambling. How 'bout them reviews? :]**


	2. Chapter 2

**SORRY. SORRY. Sorry. Hi. See, this is exactly why I don't normally let myself do multichapter fics. Updating is like, my bane of fanfiction-ing.  
**

**This chapter's a bit shorter, but I'll make it up to you in the next one. **

**Please don't hate me. Read on with a loving heart, or out of boredom. Whatever floats your trireme. ;)**

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Chapter 2

"N-Nico! It's going to fall on me! I can't—" she gave a small squeal as Nico dove underneath the hellhound, grabbed her, and rolled out the other side. They watched, gasping for breath, as the monster crumbled to gold dust. Neither of them had realized that Nico had his arms around Thalia as they were on the ground, propped up on their elbows. Thalia dropped her head onto his shoulder and sighed, relieved. "Gods," she breathed. "I thought that thing would fall flat on me. It's a good thing you pulled me out."

Nico raised an eyebrow at her. "A good thing, huh? Jeez, no gratitude." He smirked when she rolled her eyes, the corners of her lips curving up ever so slightly.

"All right, fine. _Thank you_," she enunciated, smiling up at him. It made Nico feel good, but also kind of tickled from the inside, because the smile he just got wasn't the usual biting, sarcastic Thalia smile. It was a genuinely grateful one. It gave Nico butterflies in his stomach. Lots of them. But he tried to play it cool.

"That's all I get? Come on, I just saved your life," he said, pouting.

Thalia laughed softly. "Well, I guess I could show a little more gratitude, if you'd like."

Nico tried hard to keep a straight face as he somehow brought his face closer to Thalia's, leaving them inches apart. "Yeah, I would." _Really? Really?!_ He made a mental note to slap himself later.

Thalia looked into his eyes for a second longer before closing her own and pressing her lips to his with a gentleness that thoroughly shocked Nico—no pun intended. As he let his lips melt into the kiss, he felt tiny sparks each time he or Thalia even moved a muscle. He wrapped his arms tighter around her waist and held her closer to him, deepening the kiss. She sighed into his lips and rested one hand delicately on his chest, the other at the back of his neck, stroking his hair every now and then. Although Nico had flirted with multiple girls over the past few months (being fifteen favored him, so why not), Thalia was the first one he'd actually ever kissed, and he got the feeling she was enjoying it just as much as he was.

Suddenly, she froze. She pulled back and sat up, a bit too fast for Nico's liking. He looked at her, puzzled as to why she broke off the kiss all of a sudden, until he saw the bewilderment, guilt, and fear in her eyes. _Oh, Styx_, he cursed to himself, pulling back. _That couldn't have happened. No way._ He did _not_ just kiss Artemis' lieutenant, not to mention his very close friend.

"Thalia…" he trailed off. What was he supposed to say? He'd never seen her this upset before, much less been the reason for it. "Um, I didn't mean—uh—if—"

"You know what, just don't. Don't even," she interrupted. Her breathing was heavy, almost like she was trying hard not to cry. She slapped a hand to her forehead as she stared at the ground, thoroughly petrified by what had just happened. Then she must have remembered that Nico was still there, because she turned to him with a broken, almost accusatory expression that made him wince. _Oh gods_,he thought. _I broke Thalia._ Something he had deemed practically impossible up until then, and he'd done it himself. The gravity of the situation started to sink in a bit better once he saw her stunningly flawless face. It made him feel absolutely terrible.

Thalia searched his face nervously, not meeting his eyes. She said carefully, "I gotta go," and got up, hurriedly walking back towards Camp grounds. Nico was left sitting on the freshly yellowed grass, horrified at what he'd just done. He watched Thalia's figure brusquely retreating into the woods. Maybe if she wasn't a hunter, if she was just some other girl, he would have been checking her out or something, but now he just felt bad. Really, really bad.

He shot to his feet with the sudden realization that people on the green would have heard the hellhound, and they definitely would have wondered what happened. So he ran to the nearest shadow and brought himself by the side of the Big House, casually walking out of the shadows like nothing happened. He feigned walking aimlessly for the next hundred yards or so until Percy came jogging up to him.

"Nico!" he called. "Dude, are you all right? We heard a hellhound and we checked the forests, but we couldn't find anything, and you two were missing, and Thalia said—"

"Yeah," Nico cut off his rambling, distracted. "Yeah, we killed it. Everybody's okay. Um, Percy, I need to talk to you about that. It's kind of, um…complicated."

Percy, being his usual oblivious self, blinked. "Okay. So what's up?"

Nico tried hard to resist slapping his cousin. "Not here, doofus! Come to my cabin or something. We'll talk."

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**The review button is waiting. And frankly, so am I. You'll get virtual double chocolate chip cookies! :D Stay tuned for more, and if I don't update within, like, ten days, feel free to spam me with reminders :P**

**-Sizzle  
**


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